Deltaic Risks and Policy Development - A Participatory Appraisal for Living Delta Hub
Authors: Malay Pramanik & Indrajit Pal
Asia’s mega-deltas are particularly vulnerable to multiple hazards influenced by environmental and climatic drivers such as storm surges, sea-level rise, subsidence, salinity intrusion, precipitation, and temperature changes. Socio-economic factors, including economic activity, urbanisation trends, land-use change, lifestyles, and demographics, also impact development targets at various levels, e.g., local, sub-national, and national levels. These complex issues and potential impacts on people and their livelihood, water and sanitation, health, and basic services require comprehensive knowledge to plan appropriate policy adaptations. The role and influence of delta dwellers are paramount for development strategies through their holistic involvement and ownerships. Addressing root causes for various drivers, accumulated data through the participatory process is the need of the hour.
The Living Deltas Hub is primarily focusing on understanding natural cultural heritage of delta communities and socio-ecological-systems though the participatory approaches to the Red River, Mekong (Vietnam) and Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM: Bangladesh and India) region. Multi-stakeholder participation for co-development of the resilience pathways necessitates the household level data collection, community level primary information and relevant peer reviewed and grey literatures related to socio-economic and demographic characteristics. In the participatory approach, key aims of the household survey are to inform and monitor development policies and planning for the deltas. The questionnaire developed by the LDH team also incorporated perspectives related to the impacts of COVID-19 and Cyclone Amphan (particularly for GBM: Bangladesh, India) as delta communities might respond to these (i.e., COVID-19 and Cyclone Amphan) impacts and concerns.
The study at the delta socio-ecological system (SES) aims to achieve the following);
Understand the risks to local SES emanating from the household’s economy, attitudes and behaviors.
Evaluate the perception and level of climate change impacts and risks (e.g., fluvial flooding, pluvial flooding, storm surge, salinity, sedimentation and erosion).
Generate an understanding of gaps in agricultural and water management practices and technology adoption, particularly in the context of natural-cultural heritage.
Develop coping and adaptation strategies to hazards and risks at the individual, household, and community level.
Understand the key determinants of nutrition, food security risks, and selected health outcomes to delta SESs.
Assess the perception of risk governance, social capital, and trust to enhance delta community resilience in the face of natural and human-caused disasters and re-formulate integrated risk drivers.
Understand the patterns and drivers of livelihood shifts, young entrepreneurs’ role in diversifying livelihoods.
Evaluate the role of women in risks/hazards.
A greater effort has been put in to co-develop design delta specific questions with active and colossal participation from different work packages and sub-group members and the respective countries' delta leads. The data collection approach will be a mixed method comprising household survey (HHs), key informant interviews (KIIs), focused group discussions (FGDs), stakeholders and community interview, and workshops in the deltas. A cross-sectional household survey will be conducted using a two-step process (i.e., pilot and main survey) with an estimated 1200 samples from each delta/country. For the pilot survey, 5% of the total sample (1200 households) will be considered, and the remaining will be in the final survey based on the random sampling technique. The key informant interviews and focused group discussions will be organised purposively to collect information from a wide range of population, including residents, community leaders, service providers, and professionals who have broad knowledge about the community and the region.
Sampling sites have been finalized based on several scoping visits in the delta region, informal discussion with stakeholders, communities, and delta partners of the respective countries. The piloting of the household survey is in progress for the Mekong and Red river deltas due to the relatively better situation of Vietnam compared to Bangladesh and India on the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. COVID-19 travel restriction and the devastation by Cyclone Amphan in May 2020, along with Assembly Election in West Bengal for GBM India significantly impacted the survey process in GBM India and Bangladesh.
Systemic data management process will be followed to ensure the accessibility of the Survey data for HUB members for further analysis as listed in the work plan. The HUB is intended to influence the policy and planning at various levels through knowledge co-production and transfer, developing a network of stakeholder partnerships with delta dwellers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government departments, academics, and businesses to scope, map, and research, human relationships with and impacts towards mutually desired delta futures.
